More trustworthy than the average junkie
Plus: Just sell wine in Stanley Quenchers already!
As the ‘sletter god Matt Levine would say: oh, Elon. We all had a good laugh about Mr. Musk’s Magical Rube Juice last month, but the reality is that no matter how much of a grifty joke it is, Tesla’s CyberBeer is still alcohol, and alcohol is a drug. Drugs are serious business! Which is why board members at the union-busting automaker are seriously concerned that their boss is jeopardizing the business by doing them.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Emily Glazer and Kirsten Grind reported that Our Regrettable Musk, whose busy schedule includes running six companies into the ground and being extremely divorced online, might-could-pretty-clearly-does have a bit of a drug problem. Grind previously reported in October 2023 that Musk does hella ketamine for reasons including depression and parties. Three months later, her probably inevitable follow-up about the alarming effects of that drug use includes this apparently pivotal scene from a companywide event at SpaceX in 2017 (emphasis mine throughout):
Hundreds of SpaceX employees gathered around mission control at the rocket company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., in anticipation of Musk, who was nearly an hour late to arrive at the all-hands meeting about the company’s latest rocket.
When he finally took the stage, Musk was strangely incomprehensible at times. He slurred his words and rambled for around 15 minutes, according to executives in attendance, and referred repeatedly to SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket prototype, which was known as BFR, as “Big F—ing Rocket.”
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell ultimately stepped in and took over the meeting.
It couldn’t be learned if Musk was under the influence that day. But after the meeting, the SpaceX executives privately talked about their worries Musk was on drugs. One described the event as “nonsensical,” “unhinged” and “cringeworthy.”
Obviously, it’s very cool and good that the guy to whom United States government has chosen to outsource infrastructure development, battlefield communications, and space exploration is a Gen-X racist in a k-hole. (Allegedly!) But this being a boozeletter, I wanted to point out the shocking resemblance between this embarrassing display from Musk, and another narcotically involved corporate meltdown by another arrogant, polarizing nepo baby—the latter in the American beer industry of recent past.